German company to build Vietnam's first wind turbine factory

May 30, 2008, 5:54 GMT

Hanoi - Four Vietnamese companies will establish a joint venture with German manufacturer Fuhrlaender AG to build Vietnam's first wind turbine factory, an executive of one of the Vietnamese firms said Friday.

'The negotiations are in the final stage,' said Vu Dinh Tuan, deputy director of Thien Nang Co., a Vietnamese green-energy products company.

The other three Vietnamese partners are machine manufacturer Lilama, construction machinery company Coma, and Techcombank.

Tuan said the joint venture would have an initial investment capital of 39 million dollars, and that construction of the wind turbine manufacturing plant would begin in 2009 at the Nhon Hoi economic zone in Binh Dinh province, 1,000 kilometers south of Hanoi.

Tuan said the factory would be able to produce 15 to 20 turbines per month, each with a capacity of between 1.5 and 2.5 megawatts. He said half the output would be used to generate domestic power, with the other half to be exported.

Tuan said current demand for wind turbines in Vietnam had been estimated at 2 gigawatts.

Vietnam is suffering a severe shortage of electric power generating capacity due to economic growth average over 7 per cent a year since 2000. The country has total installed generating capacity of about 13 gigawatts, but plans to more than double that to 33 gigawatts by 2015.

Fuhrlaender recently announced plans to build a factory in Butte, Montana for the North American market. Tuan said the company had been seeking to build a plant in Vietnam for 10 years.